I once knew this girl who believed the world didn’t need her. She thought she’d be better off, far away in her own, made up one. She hated the smell of coffee but loved the smell of gin. She admired the word Venice but swore she’d never go. She hated cigarette smoke and perfectly rolled blunts but I’d always catch her slipping on my smoke break outside. I never truly understood what she meant when she said she wasn’t needed by the world. I always thought that meant she was sad inside but really, it meant she was happier than any of us down here on the other side of the sky could ever be.

I met her on one of those rainy days when the clouds are bigger than the sun. I was just finishing my shift down at the store, cleaning shoes, and I decided I’d walk home that day. Even though the puddles were bigger than the sidewalks, I walked. And I sure am glad I did because just before I crossed the busy street around the corner, I saw her. She was a funny looking thing with long, skinny legs and frizzy red hair but she was the most beautiful funny looking thing I had ever seen. Her eyes were made of the prettiest green and she had below, about a million freckles. She was sat on a bench with her face buried in a book and I pretended not to notice her when I strolled past but how could you not? She followed close behind me and I tried my best to act surprised when she tapped me on the shoulder and asked my name. When I asked her’s, she claimed it was anything. I never protested this although looking back, it does seem more than peculiar.

From that day on, we were inseparable. I watched her catch her first fish down at the quarry and she cried when I told her I would later cook it for supper. She made me throw it back, of course, but it made me love her even more because while I saw the fish as nothing but a tasty meal, she saw a life. We were together all throughout high school and I would have never even thought of another girl when I was with her. I watched her make the moon laugh and the sun cry. Her ability to move anything and everything around her was something I would always envy, but never understand.

The last time I saw her was the day of our high school graduation. We were all set off to our waiting lives as mechanics or school teachers or perhaps newspaper boys but not her. She had big plans, we just never knew what they were. The night before she left, I took her to the train station and she told me she’d see me again one day but I didn’t hold my breath because after that night I never did see her again.

Last I heard she was down in Portland, working in a cafe, with a baby boy and no husband. I always wondered if she would become the something that I always knew she could be but then I received a note to her funeral eleven years later and all the memories of my first love came to mind. By that time, I was already married with two beautiful children and had mostly forgotten about the girl with no name. I wondered what life would be like if she had never left though. If she had stayed here and loved me and we had grown old together like she said we would. I never did find out quite how she died. I imagine it couldn’t have been anything less than tragic considering the imprint she was just so determined to leave behind on this planet of ours. I wouldn’t say this planet of her’s because she did not consider this planet to be her’s. She consciously lived elsewhere, without a worry for identity or money or mistakes. Everything there was simply perfect. I do wish she had taken me there with her. I imagine ‘there’ would be something extraordinary, just like the girl with no name was to me.

Let me walk along the same side of the street

Let me brush my hand against yours

Only slightly afraid to hold on

Let me scream into the wilderness

In exhiliration instead of exhasperation

Let me walk inside the coffee shop that sits on the corner of 43 and Main

Let me stay

Let me bump into strangers on sidewalks and say hello

Instead of staying six feet away

Let me make all of the plans I wrote you letters about

and see your face through something other than a screen

Let me walk inside a bookstore

I’ll trail bare fingers against the spines of every novel on the shelf

Let me forget all of my worries, all of the death

Let me be enveloped by all of the senses I thought I might forget

Let me worry about the economy tomorrow

Let me walk along the same side of the street

Let me brush my hand against yours

and decide to hang on because I can when I couldn’t before

Let me

What else

could shape us

like the pain —

in blacksmith’s hands,

steel hearts, reclaimed?

What else

could forge

within its flame

the beauty

left

in what

remains?

“Hey,” I call out with a grin.

He looks up from his phone and grins back, all wonky teeth and crinkled eyes. He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t have to say anything. It’s in the way he straightens his back and opens his arms, reaches a hand for me to hold. He pushes unkempt strands of wind-stirred hair from my face and lightly brushes my cheek. A blush tints his freckles.

“Hi,” he mumbles.

His voice has a slight rasp in it the way it does when he’s up before morning coffee. Peaceful, calm. Unguarded. It’s been a bit. His eyes half close. His lips fall into a lazier smile. He leans forward and plants a light kiss on my forehead. Better. I rest my head on his chest and take a deep breath. Cinnamon and chocolates; snow on Christmas morning. Almost Christmas. The autumn chill shakes us. The tip of his nose turns pink. He’s warm. It’s cold. Neither pillows nor comfort food could replace his big jacket and warm hands forever.

We stand in silence all the while, revelling in the sound of the great outdoors. The brittle crunch of autumn leaves under slow passing boots, the ring of shop bells, the rise and fall of his wide shoulders. He catches my eye and I find a smaller version of myself reflected in the dark of his iris.

“Finally.”

-

note

stay at home to keep your loved ones safe!

you’ll see all the people you want to see soon. :)